Entrust Datacard Partners With Elite Security Channels in India

The identity-based digital information security vendor pursues the indirect route of channels globally as an important part of the company’s GTM. It is the GTM strategy for India market. We follow the combined strategy of some direct and indirect strategy in only a handful of countries. However, the vast focus is to ensure the growth of the channel partners,” said Kathleen Phillips, VP Global Channel Strategy & Operations, Entrust Datacard in an exclusive interaction with ChannelWorldIndia.

Entrust Datacard’s India operations are headquartered in Mumbai with branch offices in Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. “We work with third party software development companies in NCR and Bangalore to develop the complex solutions that we need to bring to the market. If we don’t have the expertise in our technical team, we leverage the expertise of the outsourced development companies’ teams,” said Phillips on a recent India visit. India is a growing market for us and we plan to hire more headcounts this year, she added.

The global GTM through the channel partners is threefold for Entrust Datacard as it works with Value added distributors, directly with solution providers and lastly with the systems integrators. “In India, we reach out to the niche security partners through value added distributor iValue InfoSolutions. India, being geographically spread, makes it logical to work with VAD and their set of tier 2 channel partners and VARs,” she said.

In addition, Entrust Datacard has identified five to six key partners in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. “We will focus and work directly with these ISPs (Indirect solution providers) through iValue. We also work with Enterprise systems integrators (ESPs) that are the larger national systems integrators,” she said.

Phillips is upbeat on ensuring that all their resellers get the same sales tools, marketing collaterals, training, enablement, case studies whether they partner directly as OEM, or indirectly with partners through VAD. That’s a different approach than most security manufacturers in the market wherein the enablement focus in on direct partners and the indirect route is pursued by the VAD only, she explained.

Our goal is to build the channel pyramid by making sure that we engage with the very best channel partners that cover the regions and the vertical markets. A point that is often overlooked is how the customer wants to buy, and that is where our cloud platform for authentication and PKI becomes useful for channel partners, she said.

Advantage channels

Why should channel companies in India align with Entrust Datacard than its competitors? Enablement is the key, she replied. We are making good investment in the channels as they are an extension to our sales organisation. All the sales, technical tools and training sessions with our sales team will be delivered to them, she added. “Profitability is the next big factor. We do not have the philosophy to sign multiple VADs or too many partners in India, but work with an elite set of channels to ensure their business growth and maximum profitability,” she said.

Financial and government are the top verticals for Entrust Datacard globally and in India too. “We have globally executed over 450 very large government programs including a majority of top 20 e-passport projects. We have dedicated focus to build solutions for the government, she said.

Our goals is to identify partners dedicated to a particular vertical as we find more success with them, she added. Entrust Datacard works with generalist partners too that work across various verticals.

Channels can improve their bottom lines as various types of services been weaved into Entrust Datacard’s solutions. Our authentication platform to cloud obviously gives partners the additional revenues in professional services, she said. PKI managed services across the globe is a very complex solution, which is a great fit for channels building competence in professional services, and adds to the revenues for company channels.

As India gets digitised further, there is a wonderful opportunity in IoT for channels to secure those transactions in the connected ecosphere,” said Kathleen Phillips at Entrust Datacard.